About

Why Oxford Research Encyclopedias?

About

With today’s overabundance of information, and misinformation, students and researchers alike can be overwhelmed in identifying what’s trustworthy, what’s up-to-date, and what’s accurate. Oxford University Press has invested in the Oxford Research Encyclopedias to meet this challenge. Working with international communities of scholars across all fields of study, we are developing new comprehensive collections of in-depth, peer-reviewed summaries on an ever-growing range of topics. See what disciplines are available here .

The Development Process

Each discipline-based Oxford Research Encyclopedia begins with the appointment of an Editor in Chief, who creates a plan for the development of the Oxford Research Encyclopedias in their field. The plan is reviewed by scholars in the field and refined. The Editor in Chief then assembles an Editorial Board to advise on article topics, potential authors, and other matters. At this stage, Oxford University Press launches an information website to announce the project and to provide background on its goals and direction.

The encyclopedia then moves into a commissioning phase, where authors are invited to write on topics they know best. Authors are given an option to submit a brief summary in advance of their full article, and these summaries are published as they are approved. Full articles undergo multiple rounds of peer review, and once approved they are published online.

New approved articles and new summaries are added to the encyclopedia on an ongoing basis. The full website is entirely free during an initial development period of several years. After a significant amount of content has been published, there is a fee to access all of the articles on the site, although a portion remains freely accessible. Fees go back into the project to fund the ongoing editorial work.